


Fraternal Love as Practiced in Middle-earth

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ah the 'what-if's will kill us all, Alqualondë, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, In Curufin's eyes this means eagles, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Ratings may go up, Sindarin terms are confusing, Tags to be added, give the man eagles dammit, mythmaking, the Noldor have led very sheltered lives until this point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-19 20:10:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8223350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: Amrod has not spoken since Losgar. That does not mean he has stopped watching, though, or that he has any reservations about acting when he must. (one major canon divergence makes all the difference. . . for now this is planned to be a series of connected but independent one-shots,very loosely based on certain concepts from Heinlein's novella Double Star. no previous knowledge of that story really needed)





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> names may be an issue because everyone has like fifty, and. . . 
> 
> Fingon mostly uses mother-names; the brothers use father-name derivatives; your sleep-deprived author uses Sindarin names in a vain bid for sanity; and Amrod is just going to make all of our lives difficult, you'll see
> 
> Sindarin | Q. father-name | Q. mother-name | (epessë)
> 
> Maedhros | Nelyafinwë (Nelyo) | Maitimo | Russandol  
> Maglor | Kanafinwë (Kano) | Macalaure  
> Celegorm | Turukano (Turko) | Tyelkormo  
> Caranthir | Morifinwë (Moryo) | Carnistir  
> Curufin | Curufinwë (Curvo) | Atarinkë  
> Amrod | Telufinwë (Telvo) | Ambarussa  
> Amras | Pityafinwë (Pityo) | Ambarto or Umbarto (also Ambarussa) 
> 
> Fingon | Findekano (Finno or Kano)  
> Fingolfin | Nolofinwë 
> 
>    
> and yes, there's a lot of debate on which twin was which, esp. in terms of their names, but i'm going with a mostly Shibboleth-based version where Amrod (Telufinwë) is the older and Amras (Pityafinwë) is younger. hopefully this reasoning will become clearer as this goes on

Amrod hates Maglor's glorified command center.

It is over-bright, over-warm, and over-decorated. Just like its architect. As if, in looking at its magnificent oak table and bright tapestries, you will somehow overlook, or forget, that this is only poor compensation for something older. Something better.

Something lost.

In Amrod’s opinion, the command center only worsens with the addition of squabbling brothers, as is the case now. Maglor has called them all together for the latest iteration of his futile mission to send messengers around Lake Mithrim and make peaceful contact with Fingolfin’s people.

Amidst the rising voices, a guard steps in. He sketches a nervous half-bow and mumbles in Maglor’s general direction that someone is asking for Lord Kanafinwë. He is immediately shouted out the door, with hurled imprecations against his ancestry and intelligence, for it is “King” Kanafinwë now, how dare he forget, and anyone who is asking for Maglor can go straight to Angband, he is busy, can no one see this?

The guard goes. Fingon steps into the room a moment later.

All hells truly break loose then.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Fingon does not say a word. 

His brothers don’t seem to notice this, too caught up in their different ways of fussing around their cousin, but Amrod does. He does not know Fingon well, but he does remember Nolofinwë’s eldest as a creature of constant motion and song, dripping with gold and laughter and innuendo.

This Fingon seems to have lost both his voice and his light step. He lets himself be bundled to a place by the hearth at one end of the room, and accepts a mug of the pissant-strength Sindarin cider without complaint. He peers around at them in swift, sideways glances, as though he has not heard the sound of voices in a long time; even when seated, he holds himself light and ready, as if expecting them to turn on him at a moment’s notice.

Not that they wouldn’t. That is what Fëanorians do, after all, and Amrod applauds that particular awareness on his cousin’s part. But still. He cannot fathom how Fingon is here, or why: the same questions Maglor is tearing his hair out trying to answer about Nolofinwe’s people across the Lake. It is all very strange.

Finally, someone other than Amrod seems to recall this.

“Enough!” It is Caranthir who snaps, unsurprisingly. “You are here for a reason,” he accuses Fingon.

“Yes, well. Surely. Thank you, Moryo,” Maglor cuts in, airily, not seeming to realize that he should have been the one to corral his brothers, his ostensible subjects. “Findekáno. It _is_ good to see you, despite the enmity between our Houses. What brings you to this side of the Lake? Does Nolofinwë wish to open a dialogue with us?”

“Nelyafinwë is gone,” Fingon says hoarsely. These are the first words that any of them had heard from him since that terrible day at Alqualondë so long ago.  

There is a terrible moment of silence before Maglor opens his mouth again.

“Gone? Err, yes, cousin, he is gone. It has been some time, but he, ah, went to treat with the Moringotto and never returned. We received a missive demanding our surrender in return for his safety, but, well, we couldn’t do that, could we?”

“Literally,” Curufin says, a toothy smile digging its insidious way across his face. “Moryo couldn’t even mention the possibility without the Oath digging into his ribs. It was quite the sight to witness.”

“Kano. _Curvo_.” Caranthir crosses his arms across his chest. “Shut your Void-damned mouths and let the man speak.”

“Yes, yes, let him,” Curufin purrs. “Valar, it has been so long since we’ve heard anyone but _Kano_ talk that I had all but forgotten how pleasant a man’s speech can be!”

Posturing, posturing, posturing – empty gestures and emptier words. It always comes down to this among Amrod’s brothers. He shifts in his seat, tucked away on the opposite end of the room, and watches Fingon.

Fingon, who ignores all of this. All of them.

“You came here hoping to speak with Nelyo?” Caranthir prompts finally, gently. He has grown, since their arrival here: still quick to anger, he is now the quickest to settle that anger, too.

“I did not,” Fingon says dully. His head does not rise. “We heard the rumors, that he had been captured by the Moringotto, when we first arrived here. The rumor was confirmed by one of the initial deserters.”

Maglor gives an outraged squawk at the confirmation that one of his many messengers has indeed made it across the Lake. Curufin smirks, but otherwise, no one pays their acting High King any mind.

“And?” Caranthir prompts, when it seems as though Fingon is content to stop there.

Amrod would let him stop, if this were left to him. It is not, of course. Nothing is.

“And I went looking for him,” Fingon continues, tonelessly. His has become the voice of a spirit nearly broken – scratched and scoured away, only hints of its old power still gleaming at odd moments. “I knew where he must have been held, after all. We had passed the Moringotto’s fortress soon after we finally left the Grinding Ice.”

Amrod hears a few of his brothers suck in deep breaths. So that is how Fingolfin’s people had made it to join them in this middle-world. This is new, and new is not always good, in these savage lands.

“So I knew where it was.” A tremor slides up and down Fingon’s frame. “I had even taken a piss on the front gate. It was easy to find my way back, though it took longer traveling outnumbered and alone. And I – I found Nelyafinwë. I am here to tell you that he- that he is gone.”

“ _Dead_ , I think you mean,” Curufin says into the ensuing silence. “Isn’t that the word we’re using nowadays?” He rolls the Sindarin term around his mouth as though it is rancid but he is still faintly curious how it might taste when it bursts. “Say it again, cousin, and properly this time: ‘Nelyafinwë is dead!’” 

Fingon’s eyes shine under his lashes. Amrod doubts it is the light. But it might be.

“Stop, brother,” Celegorm pleads, low and rough, at the same time that Caranthir bursts out with “Enough, Curvo!” Maglor simply stares, his mouth round and open with horror.

Curufin laughs at their dismay, a wild note rising higher and higher in his throat.

“Of course, I have forgotten a crucial part, haven’t I?” he cries. “I think I have. Forgive me, kinsman, and accept another poor attempt at the intricacies of the local tongue: ‘Nelyafinwë is dead, and I killed him!’”

Celegorm, losing his battle with restraint, stands with all the swiftness of one of his hounds and launches himself at his younger brother with not one half a hound’s finesse. The two go down on the rough wooden floor not far from Fingon, Celegorm snarling as he shakes his younger brother and Curufin still laughing. No one moves to pull them apart.

Caranthir, ever pragmatic, takes up the issue. Even from across the great room, though, Amrod can feel his hesitation. “Is this – accurate?”

“Keep in mind that we know nothing of your valor, cousin, and this is your chance to spin a pretty tale for us!” Curufin calls from his place on the floor. He no longer even fights Celegorm, and he is quickly pinned beneath his older brother’s heavier body. It does not still his mouth. “Add an Eagle or two, why don’t you, we’ll never know the lie!”

Celegorm slaps a dirty hand over his mouth at this rejoinder. Curufin bites down with savage gusto.

“It is accurate,” Fingon says dully. His quiet confirmation of Caranthir’s question is almost drowned out by Celegorm’s savage curses and the fleshy slap of his hand across Curufin’s face. “It took me nearly two full seasons to find a safe way past the northern keep-“

“Angband, we call it now!” Curufin sing-songs with mock helpfulness. His mouth is free once more. Celegorm, cursing again, leans down to mutter something in the younger’s ear, but whatever it might be - threat or warning, Amrod cares not - Curufin only laughs harder. Celegorm sits up in disgust. He is still straddling his younger brother.  

“-and another to enter the mountain passes safely,” Fingon continues. It is as if he hears nothing else. “I found him at the beginning of the cold season.”

Amrod leans forward. A little. Even Curufin falls silent now, though his eyes yet glitter with some malicious spark. They all know the cold season has only just ended. Its chill still sits heavy in their bones.

“He- I didn’t know him, at first,” Fingon whispers. He has raised his head, finally, and his eyes stare past them all. Past the hearth, past the walls, as if he strains for something none of them will ever see.

“He was naked, and on all fours, like a beast. He snarled when he saw me, and scrambled away as far as he could go – which wasn’t far, as he had been trapped in a small gorge, the rocky sides too hard and sharp to climb. He was collared, neck and wrist, in iron: he could not stand, both legs dragging behind him and the bone jutting up into the skin. But his hands were scarred, and I could see dried blood about the lower stones: he had tried to escape, before, only to fall back on his broken legs, again and again. The ground beneath him was pointed stone, nothing that would give him a moment’s rest or comfort, and littered with the bones of both Elves and _yrch_ – they likely threw him corpses to savage, or other prisoners to fight. There was no shelter. There was no water. But there were seats carved into the rock where I stood, worn nearly smooth with use, and I readily found the place by following the path made to it. That same path, had I followed it, led straight to the Enemy’s own gates. They came to him often, then, and they sat about and watched him. ”

Fingon pauses. He draws a shuddering breath, and his shoulders shake. Once. That is all. Not a sob escapes him. Even Curufin is silent.

Though not for long.

“And?” he challenges their cousin. “On such subjective evidence, you killed him?”

“Eru’s love, Curvo!” Maglor cries, low and anguished.

“Turko, silence him!” Caranthir barks. Celegorm snarls in agreement, but Curufin has already taken advantage of his distraction. He pushes Celegorm away and wriggles upright, standing with a lurch. His eyes dare Celegorm to touch him again. It is only a matter of time before Celegorm does.

“A fair accusation, but there was nothing subjective about it,” Fingon says quietly. “I could not reach him – the ruined angle of his legs warned me what would happen should I dare the leap down. I tried speaking with him, or even playing the tunes of our childhood, but he knew them not. His eyes were as those of a trapped beast’s, crazed and pained, and he howled as though the music were a torment. When I saw that – how even music could not reach him – I knew there was not much more I could do, unless I did leap to join him.”

Amrod’s throat constricts. This mockery of choice is becoming all too familiar, the longer the Noldor remain in this middle-world. This place is as much a trap as Aman was once, it seems.

“And before you pretend solicitousness and ask, Curvo, it didn’t matter to me, just then, that that would have been my death.” The word sounds as odd and harsh in Fingon’s mouth as it had in Curufin’s, earlier. “Whether on the rocks or at his hands, I would have been happy enough to see an end to this travesty of a quest your atar has set us all upon. But that has never been my way, when I can see another.”

“The eagerness with which you drew sword to defend us at Alqualondë would make that seem a lie, cousin,” Curufin purrs. Celegorm gives a wordless cry of protest – he still will not, still cannot, speak of their deeds that day – and lays a heavy hand on Curufin’s shoulder in rebuke. Curufin, snarling, shrugs it off.

“Perhaps,” Fingon returns, but there is no sting to it. Amrod hears only the resignation that comes with realizing even honest mistakes cannot always be forgiven. “And then, not two sleepings later, I saw that you had deserted us and I urged Atar to cross the Ice on foot, rather than turning back to the safety of the Valar’s gates. After seeing how dear that decision cost, be sure that I will neither speak nor lead so quickly again.”

Celegorm’s arm wraps itself around Curufin’s throat as the younger draws breath for yet another rejoinder.  

“So.” Fingon draws himself upright with a god-like effort. Curufin chokes in the background. “Yes, Atarinkë, I killed your brother. I drew an arrow and invoked Manwë’s aid and mercy in killing my best-beloved kinsman, and still it took four arrows to end his life.”

Amrod can appreciate the pause as Fingon finally, finally lifts his gaze. If his eyes are wet, well, they are also calm and cold. Something of the Grinding Ice has taken hold in him.

“Four arrows,” Fingon repeats, coldly. He turns his gaze about the room so that any of the brothers can seek it, if they are brave enough. None do. None are.

So he continues. “The first and second in his chest, because I learned at Alqualondë that even a master bowman is best served by going for the larger targets when his quarry is moving. Too bad, then, that now my hands shook overmuch to really follow that maxim. The third was also to his chest, but this time to his heart, as Manwë finally took mercy on us – or at least, I suspect, grew tired of my entreaties. And finally, the fourth was to his throat – not that it would ease his pain, but in order to stifle his screams long enough that I could escape. So, cousin Moryo, to answer your earlier question: I am returned to you not to visit your elder brother, but instead so that you might know what became of him.”

Complete silence reigns but a moment before Curufin speaks again. Amrod imagines that Celegorm had finally let him up to breathe. “Well! Welcome to the ranks of the kinslayers, cousin, though I must admit that none of us has done the deed with such flair as you!”

Amrod prods at this new reality as his brothers flare into further disharmony. It is- it is _hard_ , that is it. It is hard to accept that his oldest brother is gone.

But not impossible. No, never that. Not after what Amrod has already seen on these shores.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

 Half their camp at Losgar had already been asleep that night – a sorry, wretched, tossing excuse for sleep – when Fëanor strode down to the water and torched the first swanship.

Amrod had only been awake because he had been- Well. Because he had not been tired, that is all.  

By the time the third of the lovely pale ships had gone up in flames, Maedhros was hurrying after their father. “Atar? How are we meant to ferry the rest across, if we do not have the same number of ships? Nolofinwë’s folk are even more numerous than ours, and we have no guarantee that Uinen loves them any better than she does us!”

How Fëanor had laughed, then! Curufin’s madness sounded so much like him, now.

“Ferry those sycophants? Nelyo, dear heart, my half-brother and his mewling people will be glad for the chance to stay in Aman, to screw their wives and wipe their brats’ noses behind golden bars. I do them a favor here!” A fourth and then fifth swanship were set ablaze, and screams began going up from the camp as people woke to see the lurid flames.

Amrod imagines that it was then Maedhros saw the full extent of their father’s madness. He would send back no ships at all.

“Findekáno is pledged to join us, Atar! And Artanis, and Irissë!” Maedhros had protested, snatching the torch from his father’s hands.

“Nelyo!” Their father’s voice had taken a turn for the sterner then. He stayed in place to argue with his eldest, but he had waved Maglor and Curufin forward when they came to circle around the rising argument like the vultures they were. Amrod had only watched as Maglor and Curufin had taken up torches of their own. Indeed, he had stood, intending to follow them along the shoreline torching the remaining ships, but first he intended to hear Fëanor scold Maedhros. The lordly, the perfect, the eldest son, now dressed down Fëanor as would rebuke an errant servant!

“I am your father, the lord of your house, and the king of your people,” Fëanor had told Maedhros coldly. Amrod remembers smirking at this. How was Maedhros to argue with that?

(Amrod himself had no stake in Nolofinwë’s people coming. With his brothers and father here, Amrod could care less who else came or stayed.)

(They did not speak of Nerdanel, then. Nor have they spoken of her since. Perhaps they all lie to themselves, and pretend that she does not count. It would be a very Fëanorian thing to do.)

Yet it seemed that Maedhros _would_  defy his father, his lord and king. His brow stormy and furious as the darkness above them, he had just drawn breath to counter Fëanor’s claim when he noticed that Maglor and Curufin had taken over the task and the torches.

“Atar!” Maedhros had cried, a strange note of betrayal and helplessness in his deep voice as he had pushed their father aside and run down the beach after his younger brothers.

“Nelyo!” Fëanor had mimicked on a fake, high note as he turned to watch Maedhros sprint away, shouting at Maglor and Curufin. “Nelyo, you cannot depend on anyone but family!” he had then called after his eldest, shaking his head in disgust. Amrod had smiled – how true that was, how wise!

Then the other screams had begun.

For that night at Losgar, truly? No. Amrod had not been awake from mere alertness. He had been awake following a heated argument with- with one of his brothers, who seemed to think that all could be forgiven (what was there to forgive?) and forgotten (who could possibly forget?) if he could just stow away aboard one of the ships, and return to Aman when they returned for Nolofinwë and his people.

Amrod had argued the stupid idea out of this even stupider brother and pushed him, sobbing, into one of the tents. He had been viciously glad that the ship-burning would keep that traitorous brother with him. With them.

Or- or so he had thought. Obviously, he had been wrong.

Where the first screams had been voices of panic and disorientation from the camp – background noise, quickly calmed or else ignored – Amras’s screams, rising from the first swanship his father had torched, were cries of pain and incomprehension. As Amrod had stood, there, disbelieving, those screams rose to a fever pitch of agony and desperation. He was alive still, then, and he was burning. He was burning!

Those dark hours at Losgar, the Noldor in Middle-earth learned that death need not sound as wet and rushed as it had at Alqualondë. Instead, it might also sound long, and slow, and popping with the inglorious reality of wet things – blood and sinew and eye – finally catching fire.

And Amras burned.

Amrod had plunged into the sea, and was hauling himself aloft via one of the burning guide-ropes, when strong arms caught him from behind. And as he had cursed his oldest brother to a long, slow death, Maedhros had drawn Amrod out of the fire and back to the shore, holding him fast and ignoring his struggles.

(although, it seemed, that long-ago wished-for death had finally come upon his eldest brother. Ever well did Fëanorians choose their oaths!)

Silent in the face of Amrod’s impotent fury, Maedhros had doused his younger brother’s right hand (though ever after, it remained withered and blackened, much as the Moringotto’s were said to be) and pushed him to the sand.  

“Let me go.” Later, Amrod remembers hearing his own voice as if from the bottom of a great crevasse. Unreachable. Untouchable. “Loose your hands, Nelyo, Ambarto needs us!” He felt no pain in his ashy right hand.

“He is beyond our help.” Maedhros had stood, then, and in his hand there was a bow, one of the Teleri weapons that had wreaked such unexpected havoc upon their warriors on the quays of Alqualondë. In a whisper, then, so quiet that Amrod cannot be sure his brother ever truly said it: “We are all beyond any hope of help.”

“What are you _doing_?” Amrod had cried. He had clutched his withered right hand to his breast as Maedhros nocked the arrow with all a beginner’s clumsiness. Maedhros, Valar save his spirit, had not even tried to answer him as he raised the bow and shot. 

Amras’s silhouette, still gangly with youth and now thrashing in agony, was visible on the swanship’s deck. Maedhros’s first shot missed; his second hit somewhere about the shoulder; his third went wide.

“I am sorry to ask this of you, Turko,” he had murmured when Celegorm joined them, wordlessly. “But perhaps your hunter’s eye will see what I cannot.”

Nonetheless, Maedhros had not let Celegorm take the bow, though he himself had never used the Teleri weapon before. He had only let Celegorm show him how to better aim and draw, and they towered above Amrod, who had only sat, mouth open, as arrow after arrow was released the figure on deck.

Amrod had only watched. He had done nothing as the screams grew, rather than abating. 

Eventually, the swanship’s mast collapsed with a horrible groan. The Elven silhouette was buried beneath its weight and a shower of sparks and splintering wood, and the screams were cut off mid-note. The sudden silence was just as dreadful.

There was no way of telling whether the arrows had made any difference, in the end. For better or for worse.

Celegorm had withdrawn his hand from Maedhros’s shoulder, then, but he never spoke. He and Maedhros had stood watch, silently, as the swanship groaned, its once-beautiful, once-ivory planks collapsing into a guttering, ashy wreck.

None of their other brothers came.

“Forgive me,” Maedhros had said, finally. Softly, as the swanship had succumbed to its agony and sunk beneath the lapping waters. “Forgive me, that this has now become the best way for a brother to show his love.”

He had not waited for their forgiveness. They could offer none, anyway. Instead, Maedhros had turned and walked away, back up the shoreline, to where Fëanor awaited an explanation, tapping his foot with impatience.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Now, Celegorm wrestles Curufin over to a seat at the great oak table and shoves him down into it. Amrod watches as he leans over his younger brother, as if daring him to rise again. Curufin only looks his captor up and down, with a salacious smirk. Celegorm looks away with a sound of disgust. He does not move, though.

Caranthir remains in place, his arms still crossed as he struggles to process a world in which there are only five sons of Feanor. Maglor has taken to pacing the room in increasing desperation.

“But what are we to do?!” Maglor cries finally. He tosses his arms in the air. The gesture makes him look stupid. His words do not help. “Nolofinwë’s people will not accept me as king!”

“No, I rather doubt it,” Caranthir retorts sharply. “Luckily, they’ll be expecting a period of mourning before you place that to them as a question, eh?”

If it was meant as a rebuke – Amrod rather thinks it was – Maglor misses it rather spectacularly.

“Or a demand for vengeance?” Fingon adds. “Unlike Olwë, after all, you do have your murderer still in easy reach!” His gaze has fallen again, and his voice is laced with bitterness. As Amrod imagines wine laced with poison would sound. It is not so far from unthinkable as it once was.

 “Mm. We can worry about that later.” Maglor waves Caranthir off, pensively, before he turns to Fingon. “Although, cousin, was there no way you could have brought back some manner of proof? If I go in to Nolofinwe claiming that Nelyo is- that he is dead, then they will all think that I am spreading a lie to facilitate my own claim to the crown.”

“I know _I_ would suspect that, yes,” Curufin pipes up from his involuntary seat. Celegorm’s head whips back, and the hunter glares down at his younger brother.

“We have just learned that Nelyo- that Nelyo is _dead_ , and we are arguing over who is king?” Celegorm is having as much difficulty accepting the fact as anyone else, and it shows in his words if not his deeds.  

“No!” “Apparently.” Maglor’s protest and Caranthir’s snort hang in the air at the same time, and Curufin adds, silkily, “Well, we seem more to be arguing over who _will_ benefit as king now that Nelyo is, allegedly, dead. . .”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Amrod has not spoken since Losgar.

He said nothing that dark night, when Celegorm and Maedhros did what they could to bring A- a brother peace. He said nothing when Feanor’s writhing body had gone up in smoke and ash in their hands following the foolish rout that history would call the Dagor-nuin-Giliath: he had not repeated the Oath with his brothers as they had struggled to their feet, looking from hand to sooty hand and wondering if they would ever be clean again.

Words have been useless to Amrod since they failed to convince his twin to stay with him, and he has not relied on them in any capacity since.

But now, he finds, he wants to start using them again. Now that his brothers have finally lost all remaining scraps of sense.

 “Do you think it likely that Nolofinwë will believe your story?” Maglor is now asking Fingon. “Nelyo being dead, and you being able to confirm it, might seem suspiciously – convenient.” Celegorm whines mutely in disbelief.

“ _Convenient_?” Caranthir protests. “Eru above, Kano!”

“Atar doesn’t know why I left: he may think me dead by this point,” Fingon says. The bitterness makes way for amusement, dark and heady. “So. If you take your vengeance upon your brother’s killer in turn, well. No new oaths need be sworn, since Atar will never know.”

“Stop advocating your own death,” Maglor chides absently, fingers picking at the crown of the High King of the Noldor. It is shoddy work, and never would have seen the outside of the forge had any of them their old skills and materials. “It’s unseemly, and ultimately unhelpful to the matter at hand.”

“You are a fine one to be determining what is seemly or unseemly, Kano,” Caranthir snarls, and oh, this is suddenly the closest he has come to losing his temper since they left Tirion.

“Well, since I am apparently now the High King of the Noldor, it seems that I _am_ the best one to determine our actions!” Maglor cries.

“Only because you are the only one left now,” Celegorm growls.

Amrod finds himself standing. None of his brothers notice, too engrossed in their own petty concerns, although Fingon’s head lifts as he looks to place the unexpected movement.

Amrod meets his cousin’s eyes briefly, but spares him no other sign. His brothers squabble on, their useless voices rising and rising like smoke from the swanships, drifting away out of sight west over the great Sea. . .

“Silence.”

His voice is harsh. Guttural. As if the smoke of Losgar and the ashes of A- his brother’s pyre have all settled into his throat and will forever stain his words.

Good. Let them.

“Let me.”

The silence that settles over his brothers is deeply restful. A pity that it only reflects their mouths, and not their minds.

Caranthir breaks that silence first.

“Telvo?”

Amrod raises one brow. Yes?

 Curufin is next, never one to let a word remain unsaid if there is any possibility at all of saying it. “I think what Moryo means is more along the lines of, ‘welcome back to the realm of the audible, Telvo, and what in the Void should we let you do?’”

“Let me-“ The words fail him, now as they did when he tried to restrain his twin. How can he explain this without making it sound like he is adding himself to the growing disastrous argument of who will be king, and why? “Let me be Nelyo.”

Surprisingly, it is Fingon who speaks up.

“Telvo, is it?” They do not know each other well: the estrangement between their fathers was well underway by the time of Amrod’s birth, and he- well, he looks very much like his twin.

Like his twin did.

“You will – be Nelyo?” Fingon asks. Amrod can feel the weight of his icy, icy eyes.

“Trouble if he is dead.” Amrod’s voice is barely a rasp. Barely. Badly. He must keep his words to a minimum. “All suspect another Kinslaying. They’ll never follow, trust, again. So. Stage a rescue. Bring him back.”

“And any differences, people will put down to him having been captive.” Caranthir picks up the idea quickly, though he is still frowning. Amrod subsides. He feels some slight relief that not all of them are completely brain-dead. “That could- that could work, actually.” Caranthir looks to Amrod, speculatively, and Amrod know that his calculating brother is noting the wreck of his red hair _(only Maedhros and Amrod and A- a brother ever had red hair)_ and his height _(he is tall, so tall, Ammë won’t be able to hug him without standing on her toes for much longer, sweet one!)._

“That could also, spectacularly, _not_ work,” Curufin says amiably. “First of all, because Kano will not let Telvo two steps out of this Valar-forsaken camp without a knife in his eye or a word in the wrong ear. ‘Oh look, it’s the pretender!’” he mocks, a poor and deliberately poor imitation of Maglor’s musical voice.

“And second, because how would you explain that silly hand of his?” Curufin concludes. He flops his hand about, boneless, in obvious mockery of Amrod’s withered right limb.

Amrod is still working out a solution to the first. Give him a little more time, and he will be able to grasp the answer swimming so close to the top of his mind, but for now, he can answer the second quite easily.

“Easy fix.” He is already standing from his shadowed corner seat. He stalks to the center table, not at all minding the eyes upon his every move, and he pulls a knife from his knife from his belt as he speaks.

There is a fearful gasp from Maglor, but Amrod merely lays his withered hand out across the wood.  “Easy,” he repeats. “Take it off.” The knife is already bone-deep in his burnt flesh at Maglor’s second gasp. Amrod wrenches it out, then drive it down again, further and deeper. He hears a soft crack this time. He feels nothing. “Just another scar.”

“Are you _mad_ , Telvo?” Maglor screeches: Amrod pays him no mind. Celegorm hurries up beside him, biting his lip: Amrod does not look up.

Out the knife comes, back in it goes. Simplicity itself.

“You will need a tourniquet,” Celegorm whispers. He looks afraid – and of Amrod, how odd. “To stop the blood.”

What little blood has welled up, Amrod is well able to handle. He doubts more will come – surely it burned, burned right out of him! – but he doesn’t dissuade Celegorm: Celegorm, the hunter, who had stood at Maedhros’s side that horrible night and steadied him, steadied them, emptying arrow after unerring arrow into that burning silhouette in vain pursuit of mercy.

“Tie me, then,” he tells his older brother.

Celegorm binds his arm just above the wrist, where the burnt flesh ends. Then he takes Amrod’s fingers, stretching them out and holding the withered limb steady for him so Amrod can continue to cut.

Amrod bares his teeth at his hunter-brother in thanks, but stops cutting a moment all the same, to draw a second knife from his belt. (He never carries fewer than six, now – one for each of his brothers and a spare for himself. His aim has improved since Losgar, too. He has made sure of that.)

Amrod drives the second knife into the back of his outstretched hand to further steady it. Celegorm does not flinch at the blade so near his own fingers. He does not protest the addition either.

Amrod would appreciate that, if he had any energy to waste on such thankless niceties.

“Need a story. Explain the loss.” He does not know who he is addressing. But any of his brothers, and probably Fingon besides, can spin a nice tale from this. Something that will get the stiff-necked Noldor to further rally behind him.

“Since you dissuaded my desire for an Eagle in your story earlier, here is another opportunity for you to add one,” Curufin says haughtily. He has regained his composure then, damn him. “Though even then, no one will believe in your charade for a second, Telvo.”

It _will_ be hard. Amrod does not doubt this. His eldest brother was more than his fearsome height, his solemn eyes, and that famous red hair. Those things, Amrod can match. The other things that made Nelyo, well, _Nelyo_ – Amrod does not intend to.

“Maedhros.” The bones of his arm puzzle Amrod a moment. How can he part them?

“Eh?” Caranthir’s puzzlement means that no one else will have understood either.

“I will be Maedhros.” Leaning on the blade and balancing Celegorm’s leverage will do the bone in, apparently. Celegorm understands his intention instantly and provides the needed pressure without question. Amrod’s bones snap.

“Yes, very nice, I’m sure,” Curufin assures the room at large. “But what in the Void does that _mean_?” The patronizing tone is so thick in his throat it would choke a less spiteful creature. Amrod simply focuses on cutting away the sinew that held his bone in place. Celegorm steadies the hilt of the second knife for him, and-

It is done. His right hand, his burned hand, the limb that marked him as Telvo-the-Failed, Telvo-the-Last, is gone. Celegorm douses a ripped shirt in spirits and winds it, awkwardly – ties it, shakily – around the jut of bone and messy flesh. The spirits, wine, whatever it is, should burn, but Amrod still feels nothing. 

“Maedhros. A new name, for a new person,” he tells Curufin, but also the room. “‘Nelyafinwë’ he was in the light of the Trees. Maedhros let him be, here in the dark.”

Curufin opens his mouth to speak, and Amrod imagines that he has seen what Amrod has done. The new name is still hopelessly sentimental: an homage, composed of the first part of their dead eldest brother’s amilessë and the last part of his twin’s. And if Curufin has seen through that – well, Amrod does not want him demeaning it. Sharing it.

He is suddenly standing before Curufin, a sword in his left hand and its point at his brother’s throat, his strongly-smelling right arm and its stump pressed hard against Curufin’s struggling chest.  Somewhere behind him Maglor shrieks and Caranthir gasps, but Amrod assumes that Celegorm has his back.

And Amrod is taller than his older brother. He and A- his twin, dammit, _his twin_ – had been taller than any save their eldest brother.

And that extra height is useful for more than their games, now.

“Take thy due place,” Amrod tells Curufin. His voice is soft, oh so soft: velvet over steel. “See, brother, this is sharper than thy tongue!”

And Curufin – smiles, actually smiles, at the familiar words.

“Try but once more to usurp my place, and mayhap it will rid the Noldor of the one who seeks to be their master,” he whispers in his turn. Their father’s words mean little now, but in repeating his old threats, his utter certainty of his place as future King, Curufin’s smile only grows. It is the least false emotion he has shown since Fëanor died, and with this Amrod knows that his older brother has acceded.

But he will cement it anyway.

Amrod pulls his arm – aching now, finally something he can feel – back from Curufin’s chest. His sword remains. His older brother is breathing hard, almost panting, his eyes glazed as though he sees someone else holding a blade to his throat.  “You will swear on it,” he promises Curufin. Even at this new demand Curufin’s smile, real and stretching, does not falter.

“Telvo.” Somewhere behind him, Maglor seems to have finally realized that Amrod poses a serious threat. His voice is cautious and unaccompanied by footsteps. He is not coming any closer. Good.

Beneath Amrod’s sword (and it is already shaking, held as it is in his left hand, his weak hand) Curufin smiles up at him, seeing his father, and in Amrod’s head echo his oldest brother’s words at Losgar. _This is what a brother’s love must be, now. . ._

“You will all swear. To follow.” The rasp grows worse. Amrod wonders, idly, what story they might make to explain it. “I am not the eldest. You know this. Swear that you will follow anyway.”

“Telvo. We have sworn before.” Maglor is pale and shaking.

“As have I. You will do it again.” He can see no other way to compel them.

“Telvo. We cannot.” This time the protest comes from Caranthir. His anguish rings in every word. “You know this!”

“You will still do it,” Amrod tells him.

“ _Maedhros_.” This from Celegorm, and the name hangs in the air, bright and shining and false, so false. But him Amrod turns to face: him, and none of his other brothers.

“I know why you would have us do this,” Celegorm says. “We cannot seem to keep in line without an oath. But. But, Maedhros, we have nothing left to swear upon.”

There is really nothing so difficult about this, Amrod thinks. “You will swear upon the Oath you have already made.”

He knows the enormity of what he is asking of them. Or, actually, he knows the enormity of all they do not know. About their Oath, and what it has made of them.

What it will make of them yet.  

“Why am I here?” Fingon asks from his place by the fire. He shifts, restless, unsettled. “Swearing? Again? I feel as though I am watching you all prepare to die.”

“We will see you in hell, then,” Caranthir says grimly. Like ‘death,’ this is another Sindarin term that the Noldor are still struggling to parse. The closest approximation they have is ‘the dark parts of Namo’s halls, where you wait the longest time before rebirth.’

Amrod will need to clear that delusion from them.

“There is no hell for us,” he tells Caranthir. “We are sworn to the Void. The Nothing. Best remember that. We chose it, after all.”

As his brothers look to one another in horror, Amrod doubts that anyone registers what he is actually saying by this. Their oldest brother is not simply dead. He is not stuck in the Halls as was their foremother Míriel. He is gone, truly gone. Beyond all recall or hope of recall.

Actually, from the shuttering of Fingon’s Icy eyes, Amrod guesses that – well, at least one of them knows. And still he killed him. Amrod appreciates that level of faith and courage, misplaced as Fingon has since learned that it was.

“What would you have of us, Maedhros?” Caranthir asks then. Three brothers have acceded, then. That is all he needs.

Amrod nods, and begins to speak.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- i did quite some medical research for this, and i still don't know if that's a passable description of breaking your radius and ulna, or a certifiably questionable brother's. umm. oops?  
> \- no, there really is no reason Fingon should be saying 'yrch' here: he hasn't had enough time to pick up Sindarin, unless he's a really damn quick study. *handwaves* _this is not the continuity error you were looking for. . ._  
>  \- there are two versions of what the name "Maedhros" means. 1) from the Q. names Maitimo (Mait-) and Russandol (Rus-) (via the Shibboleth of Fëanor): this version would be just a name. OR 2) from the Q "maidh" ("pale") and "rhoss" ("flash" or "glitter of metal"): this version means something like "pale glitter of metal," a fit name for the new warrior who survived Thangorodrim. Amrod, though, has done a bit more of the first: he's put together Mait- (from Maitimo) and -russa/rus (from Ambarussa). poor sap. . .  
> \- my tumblr is [here](http://raisingcain-onceagain.tumblr.com/) and features lots of fanart, random yelling, and pretty aesthetic stuff. you should absolutely come say hi (or yell. or pick on my over-thinking of Noldorin names. no, really)


	2. ii.

Amrod assigns Celegorm to watch Maglor.

 “Don’t trust him.” His voice is still harsh, rasping, from disuse and ash, although Celegorm has been brewing and plying him with horrible woodsman’s medicines. Amrod may never regain his full voice. For this to work, though, he will have to try.

 “Watch him.” Amrod jerks his head toward Maglor, as if Celegorm could possibly have missed the biggest dissenter to their mad new plan. “He is not to leave. The camp. Speak. To anyone. Without you there. Silence him. If you must. Do not kill.”

 Celegorm’s blink is his only confirmation. But Amrod imagines that he can hear the _yet_ left out of that last sentence.

 Maglor himself is strangely quiet and pensive. He does not know of the plan to contain him, but he does make it clear that he cannot understand the necessity of Amrod’s upcoming charade. “I cannot believe you are doing this to me.”

 “Eru’s love, Kano,” Caranthir says irritably. “Not everything is about you!”

 “You are hardly Atar, after all,” Curufin says sweetly.

 It has been two days – two full spans of the time that they have measured it takes the Sun to travel across the sky and sink into the Sea and rise again – since Fingon came to them and Amrod hatched this mad plan. It has been two days of pacing, and raging, and threatening. It has been two days spent assembling the scraps of a plan.

 Amrod will go out into the wilderness with Fingon, they have decided. They will perfect a story – “A myth!” Curufin insists – to explain how the eldest son of Fëanor survived. Since none of the other brothers will know what this story is, their surprise later will be genuine at least in part, when Fingon returns with a rescued Maedhros.  

 Fingon and Amrod will also use this time to make Amrod better fit the part of a survivor of Angband. Somehow. 

 (Amrod finds himself almost anticipating this part. It is the least he deserves.)

 “How long will you be gone?” Caranthir asks.

 Amrod looks to Fingon. Tips his head, indicating that he must answer the question. Amrod himself does not know where they plan to go. They must find ways to make Amrod different. Unrecognizable as Telufinwë.

 If that means they must walk all the way back to Angband, Amrod will do it.

 “I do not know,” Fingon says. He is busy, re-checking the contents of a small bag. None of the brothers know what is in it. Amrod has forbidden them to ask. “Expect at least a season, perhaps two. I do not want to spend another truly cold spell out there, though. We will be back before the next winter.”

 Another Sindarin word that has crept into their everyday language, Amrod has learned that winter means the cold season, when ice falls from the sky and the beasts of prey are most desperate.

 Winter most likely reminds Fingon of his time on the Ice. Small wonder he is not keen to repeat it.

 “And what if anyone questions your absence?” Caranthir asks Amrod.

 “I am not absent,” Amrod answers. His old name – his old _self_ – is useless now, and they are best rid of it. “Kill Telufinwë. Another story. Make it a bad death. Something none wish to recall. Or remember him for.” And this way, it will also be a surprise for him and Fingon when they return. Something to match their still nebulous story of Maedhros’s survival.

 “And if any remember otherwise?” Caranthir asks, pragmatic even when he obviously does not like the plans. His orders.

 “Swear them, if possible. Hold them, if not. I will deal with them. When I return.” He will kill them if needed, he means. Amrod does not say so aloud, but Caranthir seems to hear it in his words all the same. He pales, but nods in acknowledgement.

 “And what of us, Maedhros?” Curufin asks. He has taken to calling Amrod by the new name as often as he can. His eyes shine with an odd fervor. Amrod does not trust it. Or him.

 Celegorm is listening for his answer too, and Caranthir. Even Maglor looks over, face pale and drawn with incomprehension.

 “You will watch.” Amrod says this to Celegorm. He knows that his hunter-brother will take this as a reminder to watch Maglor. Celegorm does not even nod. But Amrod knows this is the hunter’s way.

 “You will plan.” This Amrod says to Caranthir, whose pragmatism he can trust not to wreck their current plan. At least, not until he has seen unfeasibility. Only then would Caranthir strike against him.

 “You will wait.” Amrod tells this to Curufin. But he needs to sweeten the order, or this particular brother will not follow. “I will have need of you when I return.” He plays to the odd look in Curufin’s eyes, though he does not actually know what Curufin wants from him.

 (He suspects, of course. There is a reason that Curufin had bedded with Herenohtië, and that reason is easily evident in their one week of mad coupling just following the Dagor-nuin-Giliath.

 Herenohtië was one of Fëanor’s most trusted captains. Curufin was Fëanor’s most favored son.

 A wailing babe had been left with one of Curufin’s own captains within three sunrises of his birth. Celegorm had named it, a male-child, Celebrimbor.)

 “And you.” Amrod has come to Maglor, now: the one brother who remains most dangerous to this plan’s success. “You will write. A new Oath.”

 “What?” Maglor cries helplessly.

 “I know. You helped Atar. Craft ours.” Maglor had been taken with one of his creative fits in the days after their father threatened Fingolfin, and none of them had thought to question the timing. It was only later, when Feanor had stood and raged his defiance in such beautiful, measured verses, that Amrod had heard Maglor’s gifted grasp of language and audience at work as well.

 He had only been jealous, then. Jealous that he had no great gift his father could call upon to aid them in removing their people from the slavery of Aman.

 Now, Amrod feels nothing.

 “I cannot write another Oath in two seasons!” Maglor cries. He sounds wretched. That Amrod is taxing his creative power more than any actual compunction about writing another spirit-damning oath.

 “I am not. Asking you to,” Amrod qualifies. For he is not demanding a new Oath in the upcoming seasons. “Cousin.”

 When Fingon looks up, Amrod gestures him away. “If you will not. Be witness. Leave now.”

 “I will stay, and witness whatever madness you deem fit,” Fingon says calmly. Rather than leaving, he actually takes a seat. Amrod appreciates that.

 “Kanafinwë.” Amrod turns back to Maglor. “Add to the Oath. We already have.”

 Maglor pales further. “I – I cannot!”

 “You can. You will. And now.”

  “You cannot ask this of me!” Maglor screeches. “It took me twenty Minglings to get the last one right!” Already he has condensed the needed time, though.

 Celegorm snarls, and Caranthir huffs. It must sting, realizing that this is what Maglor values.

 “I do not ask. I demand.” Amrod must set that difference straight. “Add one line, or two. To the one we already swore.” The language matters nothing, so long as it is something that his brothers cannot weasel out of.

  “And if I refuse?” Maglor asks, lifting his chin in the air. He must imagine it makes him look defiant.

 It just gives Amrod a better view of his throat.

 “Best not.” The knife that his left hand holds to Maglor’s bobbing throat is the same one with which Amrod removed his right, and Amrod’s right arm about Maglor’s neck is no less strong for the fact that it has no hand. “We can do. Quite well without you.”

 “Telvo?” Caranthir asks. It is the first time his rational brother has sounded – frightened.

 “You’re doing this all wrong, if you want to stay on his good side,” Curufin tsks. “Really, it’s not that difficult, Moryo. _Maedhros_. You do realize that killing our songbird means – we cannot get him back?”

 Still they tiptoe around the truth! Amrod is not surprised, though. It must be hard for his brothers to wrap their minds around the fact that they will not be reborn now, if they – _die_.

 Around the fact that they have sworn their very selves away.

 “I know,” he assures Curufin, and Caranthir too. “Just as we will never get back Atar. Or Nelyo.” Or Amras.

 Caranthir turns away but Curufin nods, face hardening into something like pleased spite.

 “Fair enough,” he says pleasantly. “Well, Kano. I’d get started on those new lines, if I were you!”

 In the end, it takes Maglor only two rotations of the guard. Amrod’s arms are growing weary, but he lifts neither his blade nor his hold until Maglor croaks that the lines are ready.

 “Good.” Amrod loosens his handless right arm, but leaves in place his left hand and the knife clenched in it. “Show us how it sounds.”

 Maglor, ever one to appreciate an audience for his work, rattles off the Oath with his latest creation appended.

"Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean,  
brood of Morgoth or bright Vala,  
Elda or Maia or Aftercomer,  
Man yet unborn upon Middle-earth,  
neither law, nor love, nor league of swords,  
dread nor danger, not Doom itself,  
shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor's kin,  
whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh,  
finding keepeth or afar casteth  
a Silmaril. This swear we all:  
death we will deal him ere Day's ending,  
woe unto world's end! Our word hear thou,  
Eru Allfather! To the everlasting  
Darkness doom us if our deed faileth.  
On the holy mountain hear in witness  
and our vow remember, Manwë and Varda!  
And further we swear, upon this our Oath:  
No length and no lie, no allegiance in answer,  
We hold back, our leaguer to make and to keep.  
Darkness take he who falters, at this our new price!”

 As he speaks the last words, Maglor’s face contorts: the new strictures latching upon his spirit, binding him to silence on Amrod’s plan to take the place of Maedhros, Fëanor’s eldest son and he to whom Maglor owes his fealty. All in the room can feel the doubled power of the new words, sworn as they are upon the Oath itself.

 “You – I did not want to, I did not mean to –“ Their songbird is speechless.

 Amrod’s satisfaction is swift and grim. He was right. Maglor had not meant to swear, and the Oath will take no matter how quickly, how off-handedly, it is said.

  “You bastard,” Maglor whispers. His eyes are tearing as Amrod finally, finally pulls the blade away. “That – that was not my choice. I did not want to swear. Not to this. Not to you.”

 Amrod cares not for his sniveling. “And yet you said it.”

 “I am damned,” Maglor says softly. He begins to weep. As if he expects Amrod to care.

 “You are,” Amrod confirms. He turns then to his other brothers. Caranthir watches in gaping shock, as if he had not suspected Amrod capable of such trickery. Celegorm will not meet his eyes. Curufin claps his hands in mocking applause until Amrod actually catches his eyes and gestures him forward.

 Fingon watches it all in horrified fascination. He makes no move to stop them. Not that it would help if he did.  

 Curufin needs no prompting past Amrod’s first gesture. He all but throws himself forward, and even goes to his knees before Amrod. His head is held high as he repeats that damning Oath, and he bears the lancing pain of the new words with only the smallest and proudest of grimaces.

 Celegorm is next. Amrod is tempted to spare him, knowing already of his hunter-brother’s loyalty and unwillingness, but in the end he does not. They all followed Fëanor. They all let Amras burn, and Maedhros rot, and both their spirits be sent into the Great Darkness.

 They are all guilty. They will all swear.

 Celegorm kneels like Curufin. But he bows his head where Curufin held his proudly, and he whispers the Oath as the shameful thing it is. A rictus of pain contorts his face at the new words.

 Caranthir does not come forward when Amrod looks to him, Celegorm still kneeling at his feet. Amrod raises one eyebrow.

 “I – did not think what this would entail,” Caranthir admits, quietly. Celegorm shakes himself out of his daze and stands, staggering away from Amrod to lean against the wall.

 “You have seen now, though.” Amrod does not make it a question.

 “I have,” Caranthir confirms.

 “And?” Curufin says impatiently. He is trying, and failing, to prop the sagging Celegorm upright. “It is nothing you haven’t seen before, Moryo. You’ve already lost your soul, silly sod, what’s another couple words admitting that you’ll do anything necessary to show the world?” His grin is bright, and mad, and fey. Amrod already wonders what he will have to do to pacify Curufin what he and Fingon return.

 “And nothing,” Caranthir says finally. He pulls away from the wall and walks, slowly, to stand an arm’s length before Amrod. “I will not kneel to you, brother,” he warns.

 “I did not. Ask.” Amrod grows impatient with all the pageantry.

 “No,” Caranthir admits, his eyes suddenly gleaming with some strange thought. “No, you did not. Unlike others might have.” He does not look to the still-stunned Maglor as he says it, but.

 Slowly, oh so slowly, Caranthir kneels before Amrod as well, and he finally takes the Oath.

 That leaves Amrod, and Fingon.

 Fingon stands when Amrod turns to face him. His stance is all wrong: as if his body is telling him to fight, or run, but Fingon will not.

 “Will you have me swear too, cousin?” Fingon asks softly. His shoulders are forced back, his arms to his side, as if signifying willingness. Does he know what this willingness means, Amrod wonders: to dip his hands in blood so dark, so rich, his hands will never be clean again.

“Do you. Want to?” He is genuinely curious.

“I do not,” Fingon says lightly. His body still shakes, slightly, from the effort not to enter a fighting stance. “And yet. I understand your need to determine my silence and willingness. I must tell you, though, that you will have to have Makalaurë write another oath just for me, for I will not be party to the madness you have all just committed to anew. And should you mislike my honesty, well. That will have to be enough for you, cousin!”

Amrod is already shaking his head. Fingon misunderstands: in the end, the Oath is less about determining silence than it is about demanding punishment And his cousin really deserves none of that.

“No. No Oath needed. Of you, cousin.” There is a noise of protest from Caranthir behind him, but Amrod ignores it. “And. Besides. Someone must be left. To sing of us. When we are all gone to the darkness.”

“And that must be me?” Fingon asks softly.

“Not if you choose otherwise. But there is no one else.” Amrod’s voice is growing faint from all he has spoken, and not spoken, this day. He and Fingon will have to leave tomorrow, then, for there is still one more thing that must be said.

Amrod himself begins to repeat the Oath of Fëanor.

His brothers fall silent at the first halting words. Celegorm pricks his ears to attention: Curufin stops muttering. There is a break in Maglor’s soft sobs, a pause in Caranthir’s irritable murmuring.

 "Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean. Brood of Morgoth or bright Vala.”

 Amrod must pause between lines. Catch his breath. Fight for air, against the ashes lodged in his windpipe, clogging his every inhale.

 “Elda or Maia or Aftercomer. Man yet unborn upon Middle-earth.”

 So many will be affected by such simple words. So many have died already. So many more will die in the ages to come.

 “Neither law, nor love, nor league of swords. Dread nor danger, not Doom itself.”

 At least most of those dead will face other judges, other chances.

 “Shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor's kin.”

 Amrod and his brothers will not.

 “Whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh, finding keepeth or afar casteth a Silmaril.”

 Are the holy jewels worth it? Were they ever? Stupid questions, when this was never just about the Silmarilli.

 “This swear we all: death we will deal him ere Day's ending, woe unto world's end!”

 It was about blindness, and fear, and their own wretched pride.

 “Our word hear thou, Eru Allfather! To the everlasting Darkness doom us if our deed faileth.”

 The powers they have invoked, Amrod cannot even conceive.

 “On the holy mountain hear in witness and our vow remember, Manwë and Varda!”

 And he has made them do so again. In full knowledge, this time, of the enormity of the invocation. How much worse does that make him, than his father or his brothers, living or dead? For the next words are of his own making, for all that they first fell from Maglor’s mouth. Not his father’s, in anger and incomprehension: not his brothers’, in sorrow and unseeing pain. But his, Amrod’s.

 And further we swear, upon this our Oath:  
No length and no lie, no allegiance in answer,  
We hold back, our leaguer to make and to keep.  
Darkness take he who falters, at this our new price!”

Pain lances through him, as Amrod adds these new additions to the Oath. It is as if he can feel the new constraints nestling into his spirit, pushing aside a few more of the things already weakened by the first Oath: compunction, and empathy, and honor.

 And still this is likely less pain than Amras felt, burning alive at Losgar, feeling his spirit torn from his body and cast from the world. After all, Amrod still walks, and talks, and breathes, despite the pain. Amras is shrouded in Darkness.

 Amrod throws back his head, and screams, and screams. 

Dimly he wonders who can hear him. More dimly still, he hopes that Caranthir and Curufin will not make this the story of the death of Telufinwë.

 Telufinwë does not deserve such high things said of him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amrod tries to learn what Fingon knew of his oldest brother. Fingon is reluctant to tell him.

They leave early, before any in the camp even stir. They slip past the watchmen; they are in the hills before dawn breaks. They take little with them – a pack apiece with water flasks, some dried meat, some rope, their weapons. Amrod has his knives. Fingon has his sword and a bow, and of all things, his harp.

None of the others come to see them off.

They don’t have much of a plan. There isn’t much call for one. Either Amrod will take on enough of his oldest brother to pass for him in the eyes of their people, or he will not. He has Fingon to learn from and his own memories to consult.

He does not intend to come back to Mithrim if he cannot become Maedhros. He rather suspects that Fingon knows this.

Not that it matters. Maedhros is a new name, and the person it would have been meant for is dead. Amrod will have to craft himself in an image that does not exist.

~ ~ ~

Mithrim is leagues behind them when Amrod finally consents to stop. Fingon has been pestering him for at least an hour, pointing out likely places in which to build camp for the night, but Amrod has found some fault with each one and pressed on. Fingon has grumbled and eventually trotted after him, cursing, every time.

It is not that Amrod is truly untired, though. It is more that he has been trying to draw conversation from his cousin all day, and these bickerings are the most constructive words he’s yet heard strung together. Otherwise, Fingon has been moody and withdrawn, or else laughing, grimly, at everything he says and sees. Perhaps this is how Fingon deals with grief, or interacts with all his cousins – or even, who knows, with everyone – but Amrod knows he must gain more. He knows Fingon largely by rumor and embraces in passing than through actual interaction, but this will have to change if he is to take his oldest brother’s place. Nelyo was close to Fingon; Amrod will have to become, or else risk his charade.

If only Fingon wasn’t so relentlessly closed to him, deflecting every attempt at conversation with a smile and a quip.

It is only once they are finally readying their first camping site that Amrod thinks to play along. Fingon seems surprised, at first, when Amrod matches his witticisms about the fire, or the meager food, or even the tent: but once he gets over that surprise, Amrod watches him finally respond.

~ ~ ~

 “Do not mock the tent!” Fingon cries. It is a short, squat thing: likely constructed for shelter on the Ice, its small size conserves the inhabitants’ warmth by forcing them to remain close together.

“I do not,” Amrod reassures him. It is strange, to treat words as play again: he has not had such banter in what feels like ages, since A-  one of his brothers used to match wits with him so. “We will have to sleep quite close together, though.”

“Such a shame,” Fingon says happily. “I do not know whether I can take the strain.”

“You had best try,” Amrod returns. He imagines he could have come to quite love this shining cousin, had his Oath and his sins left him any room for nobler things.

“Would you let me?” Fingon asks, suddenly, turning to face him head on. Amrod wonders, fleetingly, whether they are still talking about two full-grown elves trying to find wiggle room in an admittedly-cramped tent. “Try, that is?”

No, Amrod decides, they are no longer discussing the tent.

He tries to think how his oldest brother might have played this. Fingon is nearer Nelyo’s age than Amrod’s own; the two always spent much time together; Amrod has never heard a hint that they were actually lovers, but they were certainly very close.

And Fingon, he knows, is testing him.

What would Amrod’s oldest brother do? Were he not dead and gone, of course.

Amrod narrows his eyes and growls, playfully, at Fingon. “Such insinuations, cousin! I am most offended, I am sure.” He is pleased with how his voice is growing less hoarse, less jerky: soon he will be able to tackle his oldest brother’s court-clipped Tirion accent.

But for now, Fingon smiles, pleased. Apparently Amrod’s answer was close enough not to break character. He pounces, matching Amrod’s mock growl with a playful snarl of his own.  

Amrod lets himself be rolled onto his back. He spreads his legs, obligingly, and Fingon nestles between them like he has settled there a hundred times before. If only Amrod knew whether he had, or whether this is all an act, a fantasy, on Fingon’s part.

He does not care much, either way. He simply does not want to ruin the moment for his best supporter.

“Do you remember how we used to do this, cousin?” Fingon asks him, teasingly.

This, Amrod knows he cannot win. He will have to play either the recently-rescued, who truly cannot remember anything good after his long years of tortures at the Enemy’s hands, or else the long-suffering lover, who will go along with any charade that pleases his tormentor.

He decides on the ambiguous. “You know I do not. It has been a long time.”

“Long enough that you cannot remember what I like?” Fingon presses. His hand hovers above Amrod’s crotch as though he will not touch him unless he likes what he hears.

Amrod cares not for his own pleasure, though. He only wants his cousin – his older brother’s maybe-lover – to find his pleasure in him.

“Long enough that I seem to need to remind you.” Amrod finds himself halting for breath less and less. Good. “That I will like anything that pleases you.”

A strange look comes into Fingon’s eyes. “Anything, Telvo?”

Amrod growls truly this time. “Maedhros, cousin. Maedhros.” He surges upright, leaning on his right elbow and catching Fingon’s startled face with his left hand, drawing him in for a kiss. Their lips meet softly, for all Amrod’s starting force.

It is Amrod’s first. Going by Fingon’s startled moan, he would think it might be his cousin’s as well.  

But there is no way for Amrod to tell for certain. He will treat the experience accordingly.

He draws back a little. “Good?”

Fingon’s eyes have fallen shut, and he will not open them. As if he cannot bear to see that the cousin he kisses is not the one he wants. “Very good,” he whispers.

Amrod nods, though Fingon cannot see it, and leans back in.

Their second kiss, and their third, are also short: mere presses of lips upon lips, Fingon holding steady and Amrod tilting his head, trying to find a better angle, a better pressure, a _something_ that will make his cousin open his eyes or otherwise participate. Finally, frustrated, Amrod opens his mouth and bites at Fingon’s lower lip.

Fingon’s mouth flies open with a gasp as though he has been kicked. His eyes flutter, though they eventually close again.

Amrod grunts, grimly – it is a start – and plunges in.

Fingon seems emboldened by the play of tongues, the touch of tooth. His eyes still do not open, but he follows Amrod’s mouth blindly whenever Amrod draws back for breath. He moans when he finds Amrod’s mouth again, and his nose nudges along Amrod’s own when he has to draw back for a breath of his own. His breathing is unsteady, faltering. His arms shake where he is using them to hold himself upright.

Amrod lets him take several more kisses this way before leaning back on his elbows and from there, lying back to the ground.

“Will you only kiss me, Findekáno?” he whispers. The quieter his voice, it seems, the better Fingon reacts. Amrod regrets that he had never paid closer attention to his older brother’s vocal range.

“I will do only what pleases you, cousin,” Fingon whispers in his turn. His voice is hoarse; his eyes do not open. He dips his head to rest it upon Amrod’s chest, and Amrod can feel his breath, fluttering with distress or desire. It warms his breastbone.

“That is not what I asked,” Amrod stresses. He raises his left hand, his only hand, and smooths it, softly, carefully, through his cousin’s hair. He clears his throat and presses his right stump to the hollow of it, pushing down to try and deepen his voice that way. “Finno. Will you kiss me only?”

Fingon actually shudders. “Too deep, Telvo.” But he lowers himself to lie atop Amrod, face still buried in and breath still warm at his chest.

Amrod accepts the old name this one last time – he made the mistake, after all. He lifts the stump away from the hollow of his throat. “What would make it better, then?” He does not acknowledge the wrong name.

Fingon’s chest rises and falls against Amrod’s. His words come out muffled. “His voice is not deeper than yours, nor harsher. But he speaks each word deliberately, sounding out every part as though tasting it: he is as much a poet as Makalaurë, for all that he never sings! His silly teeth click together when he gets excited. But it is his breathing I would recognize anywhere. In and out through his nose, two measured beats between where most would take one: not deep but full, all the way up through his chest. Slow, as if willing himself to wait and let the rest of us catch up. Only when he speaks can you hear it in his mouth: far in the back of his throat. I tell you, I can hear it from-“

And here Fingon stops, as if realizing what tense it is that he speaks in. They lie together for a moment, silent, before Amrod feels Fingon’s weight on his chest lift: his cousin rolls off him and onto his side in the darkness.   

Amrod takes a deep, steadying breath: in through his nose, out through his nose. He does it again, and again, slowing the time in between. He lowers his chin and hums deep in his throat; he raises his head slowly, humming all the way, and lets the low sound burn and bubble in the back of his throat. He lets it still, and die, naturally: it digs and rasps against the ashes. Then Amrod opens his mouth.

The voice that slides out is not Nelyo’s, but it is not Telvo’s either. Here, then, is Maedhros.

“Finno?”

Fingon stiffens beside him. Amrod tries again. “Finno?”

Fingon is suddenly above him again, his eyes wild in the darkness. What little Amrod can see of his handsome face is snarling, contorted with pain. “Do not call me that! That was his name for me, and I will not hear it from you, Telvo!”

“I will call you as I always have, Finno,” Amrod tells his cousin, reaching up to stroke Fingon’s hair again as he had earlier. The new voice holds, and when he is not using it, Amrod breathes in through his nose, out again through his nose. “Unless you wish a new name, too?”

“You have no new name! You are dead, and I killed you!” Fingon cries. One of his hands buries itself in Amrod’s hair as if Fingon would rip it out to stop him speaking.  

Amrod makes no move to protect his scalp. “Finno. I am here, and I am alive. I do not know how you saved me, but I am grateful that you did.”

“Stop!” Fingon’s voice rises in anguish. “You are not Nelyo! I did not save him!”

“We decided that I would be called Maedhros now,” Amrod says gently, agreeably. “And you did save me.” His left hand in Fingon’s hair is gentle, and he tugs down lightly even as he raises his own head to meet Fingon in the middle for their fifth kiss.

Fingon meets him snarling. Amrod lets his hand still and his head fall back to the dirt as Fingon snaps at his lips and tongue, more a bite than a kiss, and pursues him all the way down. His head is wrenched to the side and Fingon bites next at his neck, though Amrod’s pliancy even then seems to calm him. Eventually, Fingon kisses the same place soothingly, and kneels back to look down at Amrod, spread before him.

“You will not rest until I play along, is that it?” he asks roughly.

“There is nothing to play along with,” Amrod tells him, as soft as the new voice will let him go. “The question was very simple, if you recall. Will you only kiss me, Finno?”

There is a catch in Fingon’s breath, but it has grown dark enough that Amrod cannot quite make out his face from the shadows.

“No,” Fingon says finally. “I would love you, Maedhros, as we never had had courage to do in our last life.”

So he need not feign experience he doesn’t have, then. Good. “Good,” Amrod tells Fingon approvingly.

For all that Fingon claims he had not done this before, he seems to know well what he wants. He peels Amrod from his garments, pushing him back none too gently when Amrod would sit up to help him, and surveys his prize with interest when Amrod finally lies naked before him.

And if Amrod shivers, once, in the cool air, Fingon does not seem to notice.

“You are beautiful, cousin,” he says, and Amrod hears that the hoarseness has returned to his voice.

“After all you know I have been through, still you think me well-formed?” Amrod asks. They will need to come up with a story soon – the sooner the better, that they will have time to memorize and embellish it – but he will worry about that then.

“Still I think you well-formed,” Fingon agrees softly, and Amrod surprises himself with a guttural cry as his cousin reaches down and takes him in hand.

~ ~ ~

Fingon does not let him sleep, rousing them both in ways Amrod had not known _hröar_ could be roused. He explores all the secret corners of Amrod’s body, nuzzling and biting into places that Amrod had not known were desirable; he whispers further desires into Amrod’s ears, murmuring of games that Amrod had not known were permissible.

He takes Amrod three times. 

He does not ask Amrod whether he wills this. He does not offer to let Amrod take him. Amrod neither stops him nor asks.  If this is a test, he will pass it.

They are both exhausted by the time the daylight returns.

 

~ ~ ~

“Thank you, Telvo,” Fingon whispers in Amrod’s ear as the sun’s first rays slip across the tent-top. “For – for pretending for me. You were marvelous: I had almost forgotten who you were, by the end. I hardly dare think how much better you will be when we return. He would be so proud. ”

Amrod turns, in the cocoon of his cousin’s arms. His left hand cups Fingon’s cheek; his right stump stays tucked beneath his own body. “I did not pretend, Finno. This was for you. It was always for you.”

Fingon’s eyes widen slightly in the dim but growing light. It is as if he expected Amrod’s determination to slip away with the night, with their bed-play. “T-Telvo?”

“Maedhros, cousin,” Amrod insists. “Please. Maedhros.”

Fingon shakes his head, slowly: too slowly. “I – I cannot.”

“You can. It is odd, I know, but the old name no longer suits.” Amrod tries to help him, he does: Fingon can take this statement to mean either Amrod’s father-name or Nelyo’s.

“You must realize I cannot continue doing this,” Fingon tells him.

“Mmm.” Amrod considers how to phrase this question. Delicately. Something he is not used to worrying about. “How long have you loved M-“

He means to use his oldest brother’s amilessë, truly ( _How long have you loved Maitimo?)_ or else the new name they have coined for him ( _How long have you loved Maedhros?)._

He means to ask Fingon for information. He means to ask Fingon for advice. He means to begin building a persona for the new person he will become. 

But Amrod ends up with something else altogether.

“-me?” _How long have you loved me?_

For the first and the last time that Amrod ever sees, Fingon’s brave, smiling face crumbles, and his cousin weeps.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Language notes:  
> \- amilessë (n., Q., "mother-name") This was the name an Elven mother gave her child soon after birth: sometimes thought of as prophetic, or at least more so than the father-name, which was given later and used more publicly. 
> 
> Fun Histories tidbit: Amras's amilessë suggested he was fated, or doomed. Nerdanel knew what was going on, even if she did name Caranthir 'Angry-face' and Maedhros 'The Hot One' and Curufin 'Daddy's Boy.'
> 
> i'll see myself out


End file.
